QISU Data

Data Overview

QISU data is collected at the point of triage; when the triage nurse ticks yes to an injury this triggers an injury module to open for completion by the triage nurses. The injury module fields are not mandatory, allowing the triage nurses to skip part of or all the injury fields depending on clinical flow priorities. Consequently, the data may have missing codes in the injury data fields. QISU coders can supplement coded fields based on information in the injury description field (triage text in EDIS and the Injury Surveillance field in FirstNet).
Each record is validated and coded in accordance with the National Data Standards – Injury Surveillance (NDS-IS) (National Injury Surveillance Unit 1998). This process lags several months behind data intake. In some situations, machine validation can be used to include more recent data.

There are several important notes to be considered when analysing and interpreting QISU data:

• Not all cases identified in the QISU database have been admitted to hospital as the majority of patients are discharged from the emergency department following treatment.
• QISU data will miss cases that present at other non-participating emergency departments.
• QISU data will also miss cases that may be severe and/or transferred directly to intensive care or other inpatient units at QISU participating hospitals, without being registered in the ED based injury surveillance system.
• QISU data will not capture fatalities that occur at the scene of an injury or after admission to hospital.
• The number of injury cases captured by QISU is influenced by a range of factors, including the number of collecting hospitals and the injury surveillance data completion rate in individual hospitals which varies annually. In general, QISU data is not suitable for trend or incidence calculation.